We have another great round-up of kids activities for you today on Instagram, courtesy of #KidBloggersofIG.  This week features 12 awesome Halloween activities, crafts, and snacks just in time for Halloween week!  The girls loved our contribution, and have played with it every afternoon for the last 4 days: Halloween Sensory Play, featuring orange, black and glow-in-the-dark water beads, hiding plenty of creepy crawly critters!

Halloween Sensory Play

Have you ever used water beads for Sensory Play before?  This was our first time, and they were quite the hit.  Would you believe that giant bin of water beads started as just 20 grams of dry beads?  Soak them in water overnight and you get a great medium for play.  The girls were big fans of playing with the beads – they discovered they bounce, squish, roll and more!

Setting Up Your Sensory Play and STEM Center

To set up your Halloween Sensory Play bin, you need just a few basic supplies.

Supplies

Water beads (orange, black, glow in the dark)
Water
Large plastic bin
Glow-in-the-dark creepy crawly critters

Cost: Less than $10
Prep Time: Less than 5 minutes (prep 24 hours in advance to allow beads to grow)
Clean-Up Time: Less than 5 minutes

To prepare your water beads, just add them to water in a large bin as directed and let them sit for 12-15 hours.  We prepped ours the night before.  The next day, I added our creepy crawly critters to the mix.  I found our glow-in-the-dark set, featuring rats, snakes, spiders, bats, aliens and vampire teeth (which we saved for another day) at Target in the Halloween section for $5.

I set the table up in our playroom, and then let the girls free play for a while.

Big M, 4, started fishing out all the creatures and sorting them, inspiring the creation of our Creepy Crawly Critter STEM printable pack.  Featuring a Sort & Count page, a Complete the Pattern Activity and a Math page, our Creepy Crawly Critter STEM pack and all our printables are available to weekly newsletter subscribers via a password protected landing page.  Subscribe below for instant access!

Weekly Monday #KBIGRoundUp

Every Monday at 10 AM ET, along with some of our favorite Kids Activity Bloggers, we feature 12 themed activities.  This week features all things Halloween! Catch them all by following us @PGPBMeghan or #KBIGRoundUp! Click from one post to the next for 12 great Halloween activities for kids.  Inspired to do one of your own?  Feel free to share your own Halloween activity with us by using #KBIGRoundUp!

Do your kids enjoy sensory play?  Mine love it – just by adding a fun new element, it breathes new life into old toys or basic seasonal elements, inspiring hours of free play, both my toddler and preschooler enjoy.  Share our post on Pinterest by pinning the image below!

If you enjoyed this post, you might also our Monet Water Lilies Sensory Bin, part of our Art History for Preschool series, or our Farm Animal Sensory Bin. You can find all of these, along with great ideas from around the web on our Sensory Play board on Pinterest.